"If you're going to San Francisco..."

We were indeed going there, or thru there.

On the bus, a so-called 'ordinary' bus, as opposed to the fancy modern 'air-con' variety, an idiosyncratic old single-decker with no glass in the side windows & displayed on the windscreen 'BLESS OUR TRIP', pictures of Our Lady & assorted rosaries, fortunate talismans considering Filipino driving!

Baking hot sunshine, blue sky. A pleasant draft cools my face as bus breezes along.

The sound system is playing a medley of Your Hundred Favourite Hits to the same insistent dance track beat.

Just outside of San Francisco (Philippines), a tiny shanty town, as if on cue, that song comes on...

"You're gonna meet some gentle people there."

I kid you not. It couldn't have been better timed, even with a stopwatch, this fortuitous synchronisation. Such an apposite juxtaposition sure Blew My Mind, to adopt the pithy idiom of the blissed-out sixties hippy in that somewhat better-known American West Coast city.

This was turning into quite a trip & a blessed one indeed.

 

Beautiful Bougainvillea grows round these parts

BougainvilleaBIG2.jpg (14292 bytes)

"Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair..."

 

 

Philippines

Ride on...

Omnibus

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wildorchid.jpg (9956 bytes)

 

 

 

 

 

 

(This Orchid is wild, man,

&, if you're lucky, you might find

some hereabouts)

Post-script

By the way, there are MANY & various San Franciscoes round the world:

Puerto Rico, New Mexico, Texas, Australia, Argentina,

most of them the legacy of Spanish colonialism.

The name refers, of course, to Saint Francis,

Patron Saint of Animals & the Environment.

Who will pay me to visit each & every one of them & sort of COMPARE & CONTRAST? I thought not.

 

[In case you've forgotten, the famous song is by Scott McKenzie, 1967...]

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